Published 4:00 am, Thursday, April 28, 2005

Photo: PAUL CHINN

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Philip Wright visits the top deck of his aging ferry boat Fresno on 4/23/05 in Vallejo, CA. The Fresno and the San Leandro once plied the waters of the bay ferrying both autos and passengers. Now as they sit anchored and rotting at Mare Island, Wright is hoping to find a buyer to restore the rusty vessels or they will be scrapped after June 1. Wright inherited the boats from his father Arnold Gridley.
PAUL CHINN/The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND S.F. CHRONICLE/ - MAGS OUT less

ferryboats_028_pc.jpg
Philip Wright visits the top deck of his aging ferry boat Fresno on 4/23/05 in Vallejo, CA. The Fresno and the San Leandro once plied the waters of the bay ferrying both autos and ... more

Photo: PAUL CHINN

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A few broken instruments are all that's left in the wheelhouse. Philip Wright visits the aging ferry boat Fresno on 4/23/05 in Vallejo, CA. The Fresno and the San Leandro once plied the waters of the bay ferrying both autos and passengers. Now as they sit anchored and rotting at Mare Island, Wright is hoping to find a buyer to restore the rusty vessels or they will be scrapped after June 1. Wright inherited the boats from his father Arnold Gridley.
PAUL CHINN/The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND S.F. CHRONICLE/ - MAGS OUT less

ferryboats_030_pc.jpg
A few broken instruments are all that's left in the wheelhouse. Philip Wright visits the aging ferry boat Fresno on 4/23/05 in Vallejo, CA. The Fresno and the San Leandro once plied the ... more

Photo: PAUL CHINN

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Only the hull remains of the San Leandro (right) which is tied up next to the Fresno (left). Philip Wright visits the aging ferry boat Fresno on 4/23/05 in Vallejo, CA. The Fresno and the San Leandro once plied the waters of the bay ferrying both autos and passengers. Now as they sit anchored and rotting at Mare Island, Wright is hoping to find a buyer to restore the rusty vessels or they will be scrapped after June 1. Wright inherited the boats from his father Arnold Gridley.
PAUL CHINN/The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND S.F. CHRONICLE/ - MAGS OUT less

ferryboats_081_pc.jpg
Only the hull remains of the San Leandro (right) which is tied up next to the Fresno (left). Philip Wright visits the aging ferry boat Fresno on 4/23/05 in Vallejo, CA. The Fresno and the ... more

The remnants of two former San Francisco Bay ferries slowly rock against their moorings at Mare Island, waiting for a revival that may never come.

The Fresno and the San Leandro were part of the glory days on the bay before the Golden Gate and Bay bridges were built, but their remaining days appear to be numbered.

The entrepreneur who wanted to restore them, Arnold Stirewalt Gridley, died last year, and so, apparently, did his dream.

The old boats are now scheduled to be scrapped unless somebody, anybody, steps forward to claim them by June 1.

"It is something that I have agonized over for the last year," said Gridley's son, Phil Wright, a 58-year-old real estate developer in Healdsburg, who is now in charge of the boats. "How do we keep my dad's dream alive when we don't have the financial ability to do it? I'm out of time now. I need someone to step in and take over."

Wright is offering to give away the Fresno, which is intact but rundown and leaky, and the San Leandro, which is really just a rusted hull. He says the first person who can take over the $100,000 insurance bond and pay the $6, 000 or so a month it costs to moor, pump out and maintain the vessels can have them.

Wright estimates it would cost about $100,000 just to fix the leaking hull on the Fresno. Fully restoring either ferry would cost from $1 million to $2 million, he said.

"There is so much California history there that it would be a shame if there is not some group out there that can come forward and preserve these ferries," Wright said.

The two vessels went into service near the end of a classic era on the bay, when ferryboats named after Northern California cities plied the waters. People could drive their cars on board, park and relax or dine as they steamed across the bay.

The Fresno was built as an auto ferry in 1927 for the Southern Pacific Railroad and later operated by the Southern Pacific/Golden Gate line. It was one of six steel-hulled ferries built for service on San Francisco Bay. The Fresno and her five sister ships had motor-driven generators that created an electric current to turn the propellers. They became known as "steel electrics" or "the electric fleet."

Railroads, in those days, commonly owned ferries because they could then bring train passengers directly to the ferry landings, providing a seamless transportation network the likes of which today's transportation planners only dream about.

In 1929 there were 28 Southern Pacific-Golden Gate ferries serving Sausalito, Tiburon, Richmond, Vallejo, Berkeley, Alameda and Oakland. It was the largest ferry operation in the world.

The six electric fleet boats became obsolete after the Bay and Golden Gate bridges opened in 1936 and 1937, respectively, turning automobile travel into the area's primary mode of transportation. The boats were all sold to Puget Sound's Black Ball line in 1940 and 1941 and renamed. Amazingly, four of the vessels are still in use in Washington.

The Fresno was renamed the Willapa and used on the Seattle-Bremerton run until it was retired in 1968 and returned to the Bay Area. Gridley bought it at auction in 1990.

The San Leandro was a Bay Area classic. After U.S. Maritime Commission service during World War II, the San Leandro was acquired by Southern Pacific and used on the Oakland-to-San Francisco run.

It was the last old-time ferryboat on the bay when, to much fanfare, it made its final run on July 30, 1958, essentially bringing to a close the era of the auto ferry.

It later became home to 1960s rock bands, including Blue Cheer, while she was moored in San Leandro. Legend has it the Grateful Dead once used the boat as their studio and crash pad. Gridley's children remember wild parties aboard the vessel after he purchased it.

A fire apparently started by homeless people destroyed the San Leandro in 1969. Gridley completely rebuilt it and moved it to Pier 37. Then, in the late 1970s, sparks from a fire at Pier 39 ignited the San Leandro, and it again burned down to the hull.

"He kept it all these years thinking he would build it up again," Wright said. "He thought it would be a natural for a restaurant, offices or a museum."

Gridley, whose wild idea to put truck chassis on old cable cars led to the creation of San Francisco's motorized cable car fleet, restored the original car deck windows on the Fresno but ran into financial problems in the 1990s.

The boats, with hulls that measure 241 by 66 feet, now sit side by side, rusted relics of their once glorious past. Some maritime experts do not believe they are worth saving.

"The Fresno's hull is thin. The engine room has been flooded. It has lost one of its pilot houses. The interior is all messed up," said Graham Claytor, transportation consultant and amateur maritime historian. "I have a lot of passion for these ferries, but I don't think this one is economically salvageable. And the San Leandro has nothing to recommend it. There is the original rusted-out engine room, and that's all that's left in there."

Others, like Riccardo Gaudino, director of the nonprofit California Maritime Center research group, say their history alone makes them worth restoring. And, he says, you can't beat 26,000 square feet of waterfront property.

"There is nothing that is historic that has open space like these boats do that can be dedicated for exhibits and still provide space for meetings, socials, dances, conferences, hoedowns," said Gaudino, who is working as a publicist for Wright. "It can be quite a social destination as a floating community for about $1.5 million."

Such a scheme has paid off in the past. The Fresno's sister ship, the Santa Rosa, was restored and is now the corporate headquarters for Hornblower Yachts, at Pier 3, next to San Francisco's Ferry Building.

The ferryboat Berkeley, another of the old boats that once plied bay waters, is now a maritime museum in San Diego and a popular tourist attraction, Wright said.

"They'd be worth a considerable amount of money if someone went to the expense to do that," he said. "The Port of San Francisco told me they would find a place for them if they were restored."

In the end, Wright hopes the money, sweat and tears his father put into saving the boats is not in vain.

"My dad put hundreds of thousands of dollars and his heart into saving those ferries from the scrap pile," Wright said. "We tried to sell them. Now, all we want is to donate them."

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